Hackensack school board censors public

What appears to be a former church and lodge building on State Street, above, will become a new recreation and cultural center in Hackensack. A 222-unit luxury apartment building has been proposed nearby, and despite opposition from some residents whose property tax bills continue to climb, the city has given the developer a 30-year tax break.

The Hackensack Board of Education has delivered another lesson in the sad state of democracy in a city known derisively as "Zisaville."

At a forum for school board candidates on Monday night, the public was asked to submit questions on index cards.

Then, the questions were screened before being submitted to board hopefuls, and some of the queries never saw the light of day, resident Steven V. Gelber of Hackensack Scoop.com reports.

Click on the following link: Another perspective on Hackensack.

Appropriately, this occurred on April Fools' Day, and school trustees basically told parents and other members of the public to go to hell.

The Record of Woodland Park didn't cover the meeting.

One of those board members is Jason Nunnermacker, a lawyer who is running for City Council on an "open government" platform.

I guess Nunnermacker doesn't think "open government" applies to him or other members of the imperious school board.  

He is part of a well-financed slate of insiders vying for council seats in the May 14 election, claiming they have a 10-point plan "to make government honest, open and community friendly."

What a joke on the poor, abused voter, who falls for these kind of promises every time.   

Today's paper

Five reporters and an unknown number of editors worked on the story about the moron who is Rutgers' basketball coach (A-1).

But on Page 1 and in an A-6 sidebar today, readers can't find any clear statement of when a video of his revolting behavior was made.

TV news reported the video is from 2010, raising obvious questions: 

Why has it taken so long to come to light, and is the glorification of sports by The Record and other media hiding all of the homophobes, women haters and child molesters involved in the games?

Hackensack? Huh?

Editor Marty Gottlieb runs a front-page story on the unprecedented number of property tax appeals for a second day, but again, there is no discussion of Hackensack, one of the largest communities in North Jersey (A-1).

The big Hackensack news in Local is on L-2, the indictment of a coin dealer who lives in the city.

On L-3, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes presents another special photo of an SUV on its side, this time on Summit Avenue in Hackensack.

Despite the name of the vehicle, Ford Escape, the occupant or occupants needed the help of firefighters to get out.  

Vomit-inducing column

Many readers cursed when they saw a Road Warrior column on the Local front today. 

Staff Writer John Cichowski's excuse for a commuting column was missing last Wednesday and last Friday, making some readers think he was being limited to once a week to cut down on his errors and unsafe advice.

Today, he hangs the entire column on the complaint of a driver about an exit on the Garden State Parkway (L-1).

Where does that leave thousands of readers and commuters who have to deal with hundreds of other road and mass-transit problems he has been too lazy to report on since he took over the job at the end of 2003?

  

A forgotten neighborhood only blocks from renewal

Look in any direction and you'll find a run-down neighborhood of homes, rooming houses, small warehouses and a large, empty lot only blocks from Hackensack City Hall and the State Street renewal plan headlined in The Record's Local section today.

A house on the edge of the lot, which appears to have been the site of a warehouse or other type of business. The lot could be transformed into a park for neighborhood residents.

There is a good deal missing in the Hackensack story that leads The Record's Local section today on a luxury-apartment plan that city officials are heralding as the first step in the renewal of Main Street (L-1).

Even more troubling is the sentence reporting the City Council will consider an ordinance to approve "a payment in lieu of taxes" from the developer.

The city's hard-pressed property tax payers -- already saddled with hundreds of millions of dollars in tax-exempt property -- can ill afford anything but full property taxes on new projects, especially if they add children to the crowded school system.

The State Street redevelopment area is only blocks from a neighborhood City Hall forgot -- at Park and Gamewell streets -- with a gaping open lot, homes  and small warehouses.

Clearly, the City Council feels more comfortable giving tax breaks to wealthy developers than it does in giving neighborhood residents a break in the form of a park or other amenity.

Tractor-trailers must wake up residents or at least assault them with unwanted noise. In the background are high-rises on Prospect Avenue, where residents contend with aircraft noise from business jets headed for Teterboro Airport.

Lawyers who must appear in Municipal Court and worshipers at a nearby mosque on Trinity Place -- a former Knights of Columbus hall -- use the neighborhood off Union Street for the free street parking it offers.

I couldn't find anyone who knew how long this lot has been empty, what had been there or how long ago it had been torn down.

  

'The Whale'

The thumbnail photo of Governor Christie's full, jowly face on Page 1 today could serve as a compelling argument for New Jersey to adopt the whale as the state fish.

Christie blasts the leadership in Washington, but continues to make a mess of state finances, including a pension system for public workers that has an unfunded liability of $47.2 billion (A-1).

Modern-day plantation

Englewood also is mismanaged, as today's A-1 story on school outsourcing makes clear.

The wealthy city counts Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach as residents, two reasons there are few white students in the public schools.

Tired editors

I love the front-page Chris Pedota enterprise photos of a man balancing a tire on his head in Paterson, but isn't the caption wrong in describing what he is doing as "acrobatic skills"?

You can always count on Production Editor Liz Houlton's copy desk to screw something up on Page 1, and for everyone else to miss it.